Tell Me Anything [Wonty]

1. Dying, Dying, Dead.

The first thing Monty feels after dying is cold.

A blood-freezing, lung-squeezing cold that just suddenly crashes into him, crippling and chilling and crunching and so, so quick. It coils around him like a snake, binding and constricting and ever-so-carefully squeezing out every sign of life, every sign of warmth.

Monty was eleven when his parents took him to the ER for the first time. His mom had talked his ear off the whole way there, going on and on about insurance and capitalism and other big words Monty didn't understand. After a couple days deep into a week's suspension (for fighting, of course– big surprise) Monty's nose was still all contused and crooked, and then neighbors started getting this scandalized look on their faces that meant CPS was only a hop, skip, and a jump away. So, inevitably, his parents wound up driving him to the ER.

He'd been sitting in the waiting room, picking away at the seams of his seat and idly rocking his feet back and forth for twenty minutes before his mom got up to use the restroom. Monty's dad had remained tight-lipped for most of the trip, only occasionally muttering about the constitutional right to a fistfight or eating the rich or whatever. He smelled like a Bud Light. But when Monty's mom had gone, he just turned and looked at Monty with this soul-grinding, spell-binding smile of pure fondness– one Monty had never seen before, much less on his dad's face.

"Don't ever let these fucking rich-ass bastards push ya around, Monte," His dad had said. Monte, his dad called him. Monte, like a mountain. Big, brave, and strong. Like a boy, like a man. "Not if it means a broken nose, not a lawsuit, or nothin', okay? You ain't a pushover, boy, and you get that from me. 'member."

"Course, Dad."

That's the nicest Monty's dad had ever been to him.

And when he comes to, the colors are all wrong and distorted and high-contrast, like a synesthesia headache or a spilled watercolor palette. Sounds are wooly and oblong– he can hear people arguing just outside– and oh, Jesus fucking Christ, he's got this head-splitting migraine...

"-off! Get off! Get the fuck away! Go!"

"Well, fuck you."

"Fuck you yourself. What's wrong with you?"

"You can't help from butting into other people's business, can you–"

Monty can just hear himself nonsensically grumble and drone on from beneath his breath, "Fuckwads. Just wait until the guards wake... get their asses handed to 'em, I swear... fuck, I'll do it myself if this goes on..." He cusses, drowsily rolling over on his side to see... a TV screen.

A TV screen, which is decidedly not a cement wall.

Monty's not in prison. He's on a couch. Bryce Walker's couch. And there's beer and cigarettes and heating. And Monty remembers. He remembers sleeping on this sofa– crashing on it like a mid-pacific wave– after his dad had kicked him out, after a drunk nightcap at a rich-kid party, or after getting into a fight with some schmucks off the street. He was sitting on it, playing video games with Alex Standall for six hours straight while Hannah Baker got raped outside in the hot tub.

Monty thinks it wouldn't be half bad to die on this couch. He'd pretty much lived on it already anyway.

The TV screen is paused on a Desert Duty game, looks to have been for a while. Monty remembers being so obsessed with it Junior year that he'd stay up all night and play it during class. Then he stopped. Abruptly, entirely, and in full. That's when he started seeing Winston, found something a little more interesting than staring at screens day in and day out.